Part 17 (1/2)

”I can get you your own beer,” I told her. ”The owner has a big crush on me.”

She laughed. And then we found ourselves staring into each other's eyes.

I broke eye contact first--somebody had to before this turned complicated.

Obviously, she and I, somehow, were becoming intimate. There was a natural sensuality to this woman, an unconscious s.e.xuality that I was very conscious of.

The Army, unique inst.i.tution that it is, has managed, through bureaucratic dictates and brute legal force, to quell or repress nearly all of the flawed human compulsions and quirks, from social inequalities, to racial and religious intolerance, to the inbred American inclinations toward indiscipline, laziness, and disobedience. Send us your bigots, your sn.o.bs, your slovenly punks; we will unkink their screwed-up heads and return to you a model citizen, an individual of tolerance, good citizens.h.i.+p, and self-discipline--or a fairly convincing fake.

Yet the attraction between the s.e.xes has eluded even the Army's most Orwellian programs and mind games. Here we are, some thirty years after the congressional order imposing the integration of the s.e.xes, and there still is rutting within the ranks, affairs between married officers and their spouses, s.e.xual favoritism, s.e.xual blackmail, voyeurism, rape, and every other imaginative act two or more h.o.r.n.y people can conceive of. The modern battle dress uniform, baggy and shapeless as it is, is as aphrodisiacal as a knee in the groin; yet the fevered male imagination fills in the blanks and primitive impulses take over.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I knew I was attracted to her; for some reason, I think she found me attractive as well. Of course, I don't like to make a move on somebody else's lady. Relations.h.i.+ps are hard enough without complications. That's not an ironclad thing, though.

I draw the line, however, when her beau is serving our country, in uniform, overseas, battling our enemies in a theater of war. I do this as a patriotic gesture. After all, the least the home front can do is keep our hands out of their ladies' undies. Also, the fiance has a gun, and knows how to use it.

Apparently Bian also recognized we were on thin ice, because she immediately s.h.i.+fted the conversation back to safer ground. She broke eye contact for a moment, then said, ”Why did America lose the will to keep fighting in Vietnam? Fifty-eight thousand Americans dead. Hundreds of thousands horribly wounded.”

”Because somebody finally asked, why make it fifty-nine thousand dead?”

”Still . . . that's a large down payment. How could you walk away from it?”

”That's a question we're still trying to answer. I think you know that.”

”The answer is important.”

”For you, maybe. For most of us, the war ended thirty years ago. The dead are mourned and buried, and the survivors have their monument.” I added, ”For most Americans, it's a brief and confusing chapter in a long history book.”

”That's a shallow answer.”

”Good. I'm a shallow person.”

She put down her fork and stared at me. ”You are not. I've known you only one day, but . . . you're deeper and more perceptive than you act.”

”Eat your fish.”

She smiled. ”Hey, I didn't call you sensitive.”

”That's why you're still alive.”

She finished off my beer. I popped the second can.

She said, ”I was on the other end of that decision. It cost my father his life. It nearly killed my mother. Look around you--see what it meant for her future.”

”Is she happy?”

Bian repeated my question, and then seemed to contemplate this for a long moment. ”She opened a Vietnamese restaurant, and after nearly thirty years she barely speaks English. What does that tell you?”

”She doesn't want to die here.”

”She misses her own people. Her sister runs an orphanage outside Ho Chi Minh City. My mother and I send every penny we can spare. The boy . . . the one who's helping her, that's where he's from.”

”And are you bitter?”

”I . . . no. I'm the good immigrant story. I've adapted to America, and America adopted me.” Apparently enough said about this, because she changed the subject again and asked, ”About Iraq, though. Could history repeat itself?”

”Why should it?”

”Well, there are obvious similarities . . . historical a.n.a.logies.”

I reached over and took my beer out of her hand. ”Every war is different. The only similarities are that they all suck, and good people get killed.”

”That's too simplistic.”

”Not if one of those dead people is you, or someone you love.”

”You know what I'm talking about. A lot of people believe we went to Iraq on false pretenses, that the government lied, that this war has lasted too long, too many casualties . . . clearly things haven't gone as predicted or antic.i.p.ated. It was sold as short and simple. It's complicated and b.l.o.o.d.y. That sounds a lot like Vietnam, doesn't it?”

”That was then, this is now. That was a different time, a different world, a different America. The country was at war with itself--black versus white, young versus old, the establishment against the new order. A messy foreign war was one more than we could handle.”

I had the sense this was more than casual banter, and she confirmed that, asking, ”What if we find that Clifford Daniels did something really bad? Something really stupid?”

”Like what?”

”I have no idea. But look what he was involved with. As you mentioned earlier, consider where he worked, and who he worked with.” She took back my beer and drained it. She handed me the empty can. ”This case makes me nervous.”

”This case is making a lot of people nervous. We'll find what we find, and let the chips fall where they may. It's not our job to calculate or curb the political fallout.”

”Are you sure you're right?”

Before I could answer, my cell phone went off. I pulled it from my pocket and answered. It was Phyllis, who, without any preamble, informed me, ”Get over here right away.”

”Where's here?”

”My office. The decoded transcripts have arrived.” She drew a heavy breath. ”It's . . . it's worse than we imagined.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bian trailed behind me in her car, a cute little green Mazda Miata-- Maseratis for poor chicks. I turned on the radio and listened to the 8:00 p.m. news update.

The newscaster spooled off the results of the latest poll for the upcoming presidential election, just over a week off and picking up steam fast. This poll, like the ten polls that preceded it, showed a nation more or less evenly divided, and an election too close to predict.

A smug blabberperson for the President came on the air and described the poll numbers as a stunning victory for his camp, because after nearly four years his boss had only managed to p.i.s.s off half the electorate.

The contender's equally self-a.s.sured spokesperson used his equal time to proclaim a signal triumph for his man, as, even after two years of energetic campaigning, half the electorate still did not realize what a complete stinker he was.

Though it's possible I paraphrased their words incorrectly.